39 Facts About Aubrey Williams

Aubrey Williams was best known for his large, oil-on-canvas paintings, which combine elements of abstract expressionism with forms, images and symbols inspired by the pre-Columbian art of indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Aubrey Williams received informal art tutoring from the age of three, and joined the Working People's Art Class at the age of 12.

Aubrey Williams left Guyana at the height of the Independence Movement in 1952, and moved to the United Kingdom.

From 1970 onwards, Aubrey Williams worked in studios in Jamaica and Florida as well as the UK, and it was during this period that he produced three of his best-known series of paintings: Shostakovich, The Olmec-Maya and Now and Cosmos.

Aubrey Williams was born on 8 May 1926 in Georgetown in British Guiana, the eldest of seven children.

Aubrey Williams's parents were middle-class Guyanese with mixed African, Carib, and possibly other, ancestry.

Aubrey Williams was raised in accordance with Christian, English values, and his parents strongly discouraged his childhood interest in populist, African-derived, art forms such as Anancy stories and the masquerade bands that performed in the streets of Georgetown at Christmas.

At the age of 15, Aubrey Williams enrolled on a four-year agricultural apprenticeship scheme that was run in affiliation with University College, London.

Aubrey Williams's training included a special focus on sugar production.

Aubrey Williams was appointed as an Agricultural Field Officer in 1944.

Aubrey Williams was appointed to the latter position following his efforts to negotiate with the government on behalf of the cane-farmers.

Aubrey Williams worked hard to defend the rights of the cane-farmers, and in doing so was brought into regular confrontation with the plantation managers.

Aubrey Williams himself established new classes in the agricultural regions in which he was working, and would often lead classes when Burrowes was unavailable.

Aubrey Williams was put in charge of the Agricultural Station in the area.

Aubrey Williams ultimately stayed in the area for two years, and the interaction he had with Warao people during this period had a profound effect on his artistic development.

Aubrey Williams created many paintings while working in the North-West region, but he destroyed most of his work soon after it was created.

Three months later, Aubrey Williams took this advice and departed for the UK.

Aubrey Williams arrived in England in 1952 at the age of 26.

On being introduced, the Spanish painter told him that "[he] had a very fine African head" and said that he would like Aubrey Williams to pose for him.

Aubrey Williams thought of me only as something he could use for his own work.

On returning from his travels in 1954, Aubrey Williams enrolled as a student at St Martin's School of Art.

Aubrey Williams studied at St Martin's for more than two and a half years.

At the time of this success, Aubrey Williams felt that he had "made it" as an artist.

Aubrey Williams was awarded the only prize of the exhibition for his painting Roraima.

In 1965 Aubrey Williams was awarded the Commonwealth Prize for Painting, which was presented by Queen Elizabeth II.

Aubrey Williams was a regular at CAM events and played an important pioneering role in the movement, "which was to have an inestimable influence on the British art scene for the next fifteen years".

At CAM's first Symposium of West Indian Artists, which was held at the West Indian Students' Centre in Earl's Court on 2 June 1967, Aubrey Williams gave a short speech about themes in Caribbean art.

Aubrey Williams attended the first CAM conference in September 1967 at the University of Kent, and presented a paper entitled "The Predicament of the Artist in the Caribbean".

Aubrey Williams described CAM as "very important" both for himself and for other Caribbean artists.

In May 1978, Aubrey Williams completed a mural in Howe Hall at the University of Dalhousie, which was commissioned by the Prime Minister of Guyana at that time, Forbes Burnham.

In 1989, paintings by Aubrey Williams were included in an exhibition at the Hayward Gallery entitled The Other Story, which focused on the work of African and Asian artists in post-World War II Britain.

Aubrey Williams died in London on 17 April 1990, aged 63, "after a long fight with cancer".

On 19 January 1996, a half-day seminar on Aubrey Williams was organised by the Institute of International Visual Art to coincide with a showing of The Cosmos Series at the October Gallery, featuring contributions by Stuart Hall, Anne Walmsley, Rasheed Araeen and Wilson Harris, plus a screening of Imruh Caesar's 1986 documentary on Williams, The Mark of the Hand.

In summer 1998, a major exhibition of work by Aubrey Williams was mounted at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, and other significant posthumous exhibitions have taken place, at the October Gallery and elsewhere.

Aubrey Williams's work is in important collections, including the Arts Council of England, the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, and the Tate, where there is a room dedicated to his art.

When he first moved to London, Aubrey Williams initially worked with pastels because he could not afford to buy paints.

Aubrey Williams was impressed and excited by an exhibition of German expressionist painting in London, and by the work of American abstract expressionist artists such as Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko.

From 1959 onward, Aubrey Williams' work became increasingly abstract and his style was frequently described by art critics as a form of abstract expressionism.

Aubrey Williams used glazes and scumbling to create effects with his oil paints.